Galerie Flechtheim [Contr.]: Der Querschnitt (4.1924)

Kronenberg

The not yet Queen of the Adriatic had cast off the bonds of Constan-
tinople. Dearth of all manufactured articles in Europe, and of practically
all other products whatsoever, made the slave trade the easiest and most
profitable of all trades.
Prisoners of war were the regulär staple, but kidnapping rose in
favour.
Pope Zacharias and others protested repeatedly and in vain; as have
moralists in all time against any form of profitable infamy.
"The Venetians had for a long
time been engaged in this traffic"
and Leo attributes the populär
tradition of merchants killing,
children to the often fatal effects
of the Operation.
The testimony is not traditio-
nal; we have the records of the
Statute books.
Charlemagne prohibited the
sale of any slave. to foreigners
under pain of death and prescribed
the same penalty for anyone who
mutilated a man "as occurred in
that traffic".
Arichi, Prince of Beneventum,

published similar laws, which were so little observed that the prince Sicardo
had to republish them; but in their wilder country the edict applied only
to free Lombard citizens and took no count of slaves or prisoners of war.
In 784 Charlemagne drove all the Venetian merchants out of his domain,
and the traffic is specifically prohibited in the subsequent treaties.
As everyone knows, the orderliness of Charlemagne's era was quickly
lost. The sale of slaves to the "infidel" continued throughout the crusades,
and after. The black page in Veronese's banquet scene is not a freeman,
and by the light reflected from his trappings we may consider Shylock-
not an exceptional, fanciful monster; not avillain of exceptional imagination
or ferocity, but a little behind his age, an expression of an earlier order,
an order whose barbarities we have exchanged for another series of evils
which our descendents will regard as little less barbarous.
The choice of Portia as advocate needs no comment. Her legal learning
is solid. Generations of Anglo-saxons have applauded this play without in
the least understanding it.

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